Scheduling Hack

My office door.

It occurred to me a month ago that I send too many emails back and forth with students and faculty to set up meetings. At Hampshire, students and faculty/ staff do not all share the same calendar system. This makes scheduling appointments difficult and thus we all spend tons of time sending emails back and forth about times we are available until parties reach consensus. Enough I say! I saw a link from someone’s syllabus at Indiana University to set up appointments with tungle.me and I signed up immediately. Now, when someone writes to set up a meeting, I send along a link to my page and the email middleman sailed into the sunset. Great!

But what about students who wander to my office during off hours or when I am at another campus at a meeting? Or random passersby who want to know more about who Caro Pinto is? Inspired by our head of IT who affixed his own qr code to his nameplate, I decided to experiment with one of my own.

There’s been plenty of talk in the world of higher education and libraries about qr codes and their potential, all of which is perfectly valid. But will students scan the codes when they encounter them? This post from the folks at U Kentucky suggest that, eh/maybe/not so much; students are more indifferent to qr codes in spite of their upward trend in smartphone ownership and the nearly ubiquitous trope that college students will use all the new technologies offered them.

In spite of these potential barriers, I decided that it would be harmless to explore the possibility of serendipitous discovery for Hampshire community members who use qr codes and wander past my door. It’s another form of outreach to my constituents. Who knows? Maybe some nonusers will engage with me because of it?

Time will tell.